Well, America, the first iteration of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) failed in the House yesterday, and the news outlets are aflame with speculations of why this happened. Republicans blame a vitriolic, partisan speech on the House floor by Speaker Pelosi before the start of voting on the bill. Democrats blame sensitive Republicans who place personal feelings above the welfare of the country’s financial system. The elite blame Main Street and Main street blames the elite. You blame Congress and Congress blames you.

It’s true. We’re to blame. The House of Representatives, with elections every 2 years instead of 6 like its supposedly more conscientious and prudent sibling the Senate, closely reflects the temperament of the nation. A “yay” or “nay” vote by a member of the House out of sync with the sensibilities of his or her constituency would threaten reelection. Congress isn’t to blame for this fiasco; they were only doing our dirty work. This bill failed because it should have. Its hasty construction and vague specifics offended parties on both sides of the aisle. The bail out didn’t fail because of partisan rancor. It failed because of an emergence of a bipartisan coalition that collectively said “No.”

The Seattle Seahawks have a large fan-base in its neighbor to the North, including Mr. and Mrs. Palin.

Not even 12 hours ago we posted our thoughts on Sarah Palin jogging through the streets wearing a Donovan McNabb Eagles jersey in an attempt, we presume, to court votes in Pennsylvania and commiserate with the team that fell to Obama’s Bears on Monday night. Though we thought it was shamelessly political, we at least understood and respected the McCaign’s appreciation of the importance people place on their football teams.

What we can’t tolerate , however, is hypocrisy. We speculated that Palin would be a Seahawks fan since many in Alaska are. We didn’t expect that such an outrageous, inconsequential claim would be verified by a lazy google search that turned up a two week old article from Sports Northwest Magazine. In that article Seth Kolloen quotes Todd Palin confirming that he and his wife are in fact Seattle Seahawks fans as well as members of the Seahawkers, the team’s official fan club.

Is this the kind of Maverick leadership we can expect from a Palin-McCain administration? Are we HONESTLY supposed to trust someone who conceals their fealty for a football team for political purposes and willingly wears the jersey of a conference opponent?

If you’re like me, you’re aware of this monumental financial crisis that we’re in the middle of, and even probably understand the magnitude of the peril that we’re in, but don’t really have any idea how to discuss the situation without sounding like a damn fool. So, in light of the bailout proposal being rejected by the House a couple of hours ago, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands and do some investigative research. Fortunately for me, in the age of the Modern Jackass, enlightenment is just a GChat away. I approached one of my esteemed GMail buddies, an accomplished associate at a private equity firm (read: an Indian dude), and asked him for his reaction to the most recent developments in Washington, in the hopes of shedding some light on exactly how totally fucked we actually are. After the jump, his expert analysis on just that:

We know we’ve lambasted the mainstream media over the past few months regarding their focus on inconsequential details in the 2008 race for President, and that doing the same would make us hmongous hypocrites, but we assuage your concerns with the reminder that, yo, we’re a Webasin based on a prologue from a Public Radio show. To make things even worse, we didn’t even hear that prologue on the radio. We heard it on a podcast. So we shouldn’t be responsible for filtering through the MSNBS since, after all, we ain’t getting paid. That’s not to say that we don’t care. Oh, we care. We care so very much that the minute we saw a video of Sarah Palin jogging this morning on MSNBC we immediately felt compelled to share our poorly developed initial thoughts on the issue with you, our faithful reader.

It’s not that Sarah Palin went jogging that’s news to us, as it is to some others. It’s what she was wearing: a Donovan McNabb #5 Eagles home jersey. We’re not sure when the footage was taken, but the Eagles lost a close one to the Bears last night at Soldier Field and the choice of a McNabb jersey is, for reasons I can’t really articulate, a statement.

Pharrell Williams has aligned himself with the PC movement for a while now. First he joined ranks with HP in its “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign. Then more recently, he’s signed on to the latest Microsoft endeavor to reclaim personal computing. In several of the ads, Pharrell announces he’s a PC, like BG.

In the wake of news that Microsoft used Mac computers to create the “I’m a PC” ads, we wondered if Pharrell, known more for his music production at the moment than his design acumen as head of Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream, and N.E.R.D. really relied on PC’s to create the songs that have made them so popular. Pro Tools, after all, does seem to be the platform of choice among young musicians and Macs have gained in popularity because of their ease of use in the music, film and design fields.

Stomp the Yard is an unassuming film about a young man, played by Columbus Short, who finds a family of brotherhood through stepping at a southern, black university. Stomp the Yard is a Dance Flick, but it isn’t only a Dance Flick. It’s a good dance flick; the best I’ve ever seen. When Stomp the Yard was over I realized the Dance Flick is an established genre in Hollywood with its own rules and requirements, much like the Scary Movie or the Romantic Comedy. What defines the Dance Flick, I wondered, and how did Stomp the Yard do it so well?

In the absence of cable and internet in my apartment, I’ve come to rely much more on my DVD collection to keep me entertained on these increasingly lengthening autumn nights. And while I do indeed have an impressive collection of films, a large percentage of them don’t necessarily warrant repeat viewing (“The Last Picture Show,” “Happiness,” and “Schindler’s List,” just to name a few off the top of my head). In periods without the comforts of network programming, one must rely on those DVDs in the collection that can be watched over and over again and still be enjoyed to the fullest. At the top of this list is Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece, “Jurassic Park.”

Now, it’s important to give honorable mention to some other films that withstand the test of multiple screenings—“Maverick,” “Dumb and Dumber,” “Men in Black,” “That Thing You Do!” etc—but none of these films continue to enthrall and delight with the same visceral power that “Jurassic Park” so effortlessly wields, time after time after time. Why is “Jurassic Park” so consistently re-watchable? Well, I’m glad you asked. After the jump, a breakdown of why “Jurassic Park” will never, ever, ever get old: